Marius' Mules: Prelude to War

by Turney, S. J. A.

  The tavern’s few patrons had retreated to the edges of the room, as far from the action as they could get without moving out into the street where things were all the more dangerous. The barman cowered behind his counter with the huge pots of olives, garum, bread and other nibbles and the amphorae of wine as a rampart. Chairs had been knocked out of the way and upturned and one table had been pushed back against the counter, leaving a wide thoroughfare across the centre of the room.

  The tavern was filled with the curious, heady scent of sweat and blood, cheap wine and fermented fish entrails, but Paetus’ senses were seeking one thing only. Even as he broke into a run to catch the two enemies at the bottom step, the thug let go of Clodius, propelling him up the stairs with a shout of warning as he turned to face the threat.

  Paetus had to hand it to the man. He was alone, unarmoured and with only a stout length of ash for a weapon, facing four clearly very motivated killers, each with a naked blade - two of which already ran with blood, and yet his first priority had not been his own safety, but to look to the security of his employer.

  Paetus waved for Saufeius to fall in at his shoulder, and the four men slowed, approaching the thug with an air of focused menace. Behind him, Clodius was moving up the stairs relatively slowly, holding one arm tight over his shoulder wound and using the other to haul on the bannister. For the first time, the mettle in the hireling’s eyes started to waver but, to his credit, he simply slapped the ash club into the palm of his hand.

  ‘Alright,’ he grinned humourlessly, ‘who’s first?’

  Saufeius lifted his sword and made to step forward, but Paetus simply held out his arm to keep his lieutenant still and returned the man’s smile with one that contained even less mirth.

  ‘You can die here, cut to slices in order to buy ten more heartbeats for that sack of shit, or you can step out of the way and sign on with my lads. You’ll either spend tonight feeding the stray dogs from your belly-rope, or looking forward to a pay increase, a warm room and a jar of wine. Your choice.’

  Paetus saw the indecision in the man’s eyes and for a moment seriously wondered whether the man would fight but finally, with a nod, the man lowered his club and stepped aside. Clemens moved next to him and nodded up the stairs.

  Leaving his comrade with the club man to be certain of no attack from the rear, Paetus planted a booted foot on the bottom step and began to climb the staircase, slowly, implacably.

  There was no safe way to leave the inn from the top floor. No doorways leading to outside stairs. Just windows with a twelve foot drop to hard stone. A fit man could manage it. Not Clodius with his wounded shoulder, his blood spattering across the timbers with each step. He was trapped. Paetus knew it and so did Clodius, yet his prey had no option but to keep climbing.

  Time was pressing, of course. Soon the fight in the street outside would end one way or another and people would be coming into the building. If Milo’s gang won out, which was both Paetus’ fervent hope and solid expectation, then they would be chasing down the fleeing Clodius to make sure they ended him, now that things had come this far. If they did so and found Paetus and his men at the scene, things might go badly for him. And on the slim chance that Clodius’ men won in the street, then Paetus and his few might suddenly be surrounded by a far larger force and in serious trouble. But still, despite any restrictions some things in life had to be savoured. This moment had been so long in the making, Paetus had earned the right to relish it.

  Keeping his footsteps deliberately unhurried and loud, he moved implacably up the steps, matching Clodius’ slow, wounded pace… hunter and prey. Inexorable. Monomaniacal. Deadly.

  The light leaking in between the battered, peeling shutters from the street outside glinted menacingly on Paetus’ reddened blade as he climbed.

  Clodius threw a frightened glance over his shoulder and his attempts to ascend redoubled. Taking his hand from his wound and allowing the blood to flow freely once more, the former master of killers and criminals - who had held Rome in a grip of iron for nearly a decade with the patronage of great men - staggered up the stairs in terror, both hands hauling on the bannister despite the agony it caused in his shoulder.

  Paetus heard Saufeius and his companion on the stairs behind him, but his eyes remained locked on Clodius as his wounded prey reached the top step and staggered out of sight to the right.

  With silent, grim determination, Paetus clomped on up the stairs shifting a little to his left as he neared the top in case the unarmed Clodius attempted some kind of surprise attack. He need not have worried. As he reached the top and peered to the right, he could see that the stairs opened into a simple, straight, empty passageway that ran the width of the building with a window at each end to let in light and two doors leading off in each direction, forming a square of rooms with the stairs at the centre.

  Only a choice of two, then. There had been no loud bang of a door slamming, so Clodius had regained at least a little of his subtlety, leaving it unclear through which door he had sneaked. But while the man had been subtle and quiet and was no doubt cowering, hiding behind some item of furniture, holding his breath in order to prevent easy discovery, the trail of blood droplets he had left behind exposed his path to his hunter as clearly as any foot prints in the muddy forest floor might.

  Without turning, he made gestures over his shoulder, indicating that the others should remain at the stairs. Even if Clodius found a weapon, which was unlikely, he was a hirer of killers, not one himself, and Paetus was confident that any engagement between them would be a foregone conclusion. Besides, some of the things he wanted to say were best shared only by he and his victim.

  Slowly, he stepped along the corridor and turned to face the door. A small shapeless mark of blood indicated a spot near the handle where Clodius’ hand had rested. Paetus was reaching for the handle when he paused, changing his mind. Not only had his last such manoeuvre been rather a failure, but Clodius for all his weakness was an ophidian foe, and one to watch closely. Unpredictable.

  Stepping back, Paetus raised his leg and brought his boot down hard on the timbers close to the handle. The door, old and not of the best construction, smashed inwards, the catch ripping off and one of the hinges coming away from the frame, so that it rocked back and forth at an odd angle, half obscuring the room.

  Good. At least Clodius had not been lurking behind the door waiting to strike in some fashion.

  Happy that he was safe at least entering the room, Paetus stepped forwards, using his free arm to push aside the hanging door, which groaned against the frame.

  ‘A good, noble Roman general, when he realises he has lost an important battle, has the grace to throw himself on his sword. It takes boundless strength and bravery I am told, and is the only way, in abject defeat, to uphold the honour that once came as part and parcel of being a Roman citizen, let alone one born to a line of consuls.’

  He paused in the room’s entrance. The window’s shutters were closed and the chamber was correspondingly dim. Like all small rooms-for-rent in all back street inns, it consisted of little more than an uncomfortable, utilitarian bed, a small table and chair and two pots - one to wash and one to piss. Certainly not a room to afford cunning places of concealment.

  It took only a few moments for his eyes, adjusting to the gloom, to pick out the shape of Clodius huddled by the far side of the bed. Already the blood from his shoulder had begun to soak into the bed’s stained, frayed coverings.

  ‘Had I even the slightest confidence that you were a man of honour and tradition, I might have been tempted to hand you a blade so that you could take the old path. But you’re not, are you, Publius Claudius Pulcher?’ His usage of Clodius’ birth name, from before his popularity stunt of seeing himself adopted into a plebeian family, would register with Clodius. Few would think of him in those terms these days. He was Clodius: Dominus of a powerful faction and de facto master of the streets. He was no Claudius - son and grandson of consuls - anymore.

&nb
sp; ‘Whatever Milo is paying you I can afford to outdo it,’ Clodius said in a breathless whisper that somehow carried despite the war on the street outside the shutters. ‘You managed to buy off my man, which surprised me, but then we all know that everyone has their price. Even Crassus - most of all Crassus - knew that. I am Caesar’s man and the fool who takes a sword to me signs a warrant for his own death. Be smart and name your price.’

  ‘My price?’

  ‘To turn from Milo and help me from here before that lunatic catches up with me.’

  ‘Ah Publius, you are assuming that I am Milo’s man.’

  Clodius’ face sank into a frown of incomprehension and Paetus smiled his savage smile again. ‘Milo has been good to me and more than just useful, Clodius, but if I’d had to put a blade to his throat to get here, I would not have hesitated in doing so.’

  ‘So what do you want? Who are you?’

  Paetus strolled over to the window and unhooked the shutters with his free hand, swinging them back so that the cold Ianuarius afternoon light filled the room, the dissipating din of a battle in its final stages flooding in with it. The sun illuminated Paetus, and Clodius blinked in the harsh light.

  ‘Don’t you remember me, Clodius?’

  His prey used his clean arm to pull himself up, the other, bloodied, hand going to his shoulder to help staunch his wound once more. His face was starting to take on the rubbery grey look of a man whose blood levels were almost lethally low.

  ‘Spit it out, then,’ he snarled. ‘Who are you?’

  Paetus noted the man’s eyes dart momentarily to the door.

  ‘I wouldn’t try it if I were you. You’re too weak now. And slow. You’ll never outpace me.’

  He rolled his shoulders and idly turned his sword over and over, looking at the flash of the cold light reflecting off the pale watery-red stains on it.

  ‘It really shouldn’t surprise me that you don’t recognise me. After all, I’ve been dead for years. Besides which, no man who had ruined so many lives and killed so many innocents could ever be expected to remember their names and faces.’

  ‘You talk in riddles, mercenary.’

  ‘Think back, Clodius. Think back to the days before you served the Julian bull. To the days when you worked to undermine Caesar rather than for him. Think back to Salonius and your clients. Of course, I was never a client as such, but then old Calidus couldn’t resist a wager and, because his debt to you was of Croesian proportions, then sadly I fell into your evil grip.’

  Clodius was frowning and shaking his head.

  ‘You deny it?’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, man.’

  Paetus took two steps towards Clodius, who flinched and recoiled against the bed.

  ‘Allow me to refresh your memory. Someone informed Caesar of the worst of your excesses and revealed to him your network of spies and informants, on the understanding that Caesar would step in and protect his kin from your punishments. But he didn’t. Publius Clodius Pulcher, man of the people, had Calidus, the informant’s old father in law, taken from his bed, his head stoved in with a brick and then cast into the river with the turds and the unwanted babies.’

  ‘Calidus?’ muttered Clodius in the manner of a person who is starting to recall a name but cannot quite place it.

  ‘And not content with such an act, Publius Clodius Pulcher, man of the people, had the informant’s two young children dragged from their house, smashed to death and then cast among the refuse in the Tiber. Starting to nag at your memory, Clodius?’

  His prey’s eyes suddenly widened and his legs almost gave way as he tried to back into the bed itself, clambering onto it as Paetus took another two slow steps forward. Outside the window there came shouted orders to ‘find Clodius’ and to ‘get the wounded in the carriage’.

  ‘And finally, because the man was beyond your reach among Caesar’s officers in Gaul, you had his wife, Calida, taken to a warehouse, where your brutal German slaves raped her again and again until she begged for death. They obliged eventually, but from what I understand, even that was no merciful release.’

  ‘I sign warrants,’ snapped Clodius. ‘They are carried out. Any atrocities that occur are the wilful acts of unrestrained underlings. I never gave orders to rape Calida. But you cannot be…’

  ‘Paetus? No. Really, you’re surprisingly accurate there, Clodius. I stopped being Paetus, camp prefect of Caesar’s army and noble of Rome, the day I left camp, vowing revenge on you and the general. I am but the ghost of Paetus. One of the avenging lemures come to plague the living. Strange, the paths life takes. You and Caesar were such bitter enemies, your enmities dragging me into a cauldron of hate and treachery and resulting in the death of everyone I held dear; and for what? So that a year or two later you could come together like brothers. Brothers in blood.’

  ‘I did nothing that others before me have not done. It is proscription, pure and simple, Paetus! A man in power cannot afford to leave his enemies behind him. He signs the warrants for those enemies and for their families. It is the way of things. Any atrocities are on the hands of my men, not I.’

  ‘You have a reputation, Clodius, for weaselling out of trouble. The only man ever to violate the sacred traditions of the Bona Dea, to cause shock across Rome and break the most ancient laws and yet you walked free. Sadly, you’re not going to walk free today, Clodius.’

  ‘I can pay you…’

  ‘I need no money, Clodius. The only things I really want, you already took away from me, and you are not in a position to return. Time’s up. The fight is over and now this has to end. But uncomprehended revenge is no revenge, so I wanted you to be clear on who I was and why I was here before the end.’

  Clodius, now kneeling on the bed and shaking so heavily that it was moving the furniture beneath him, shuffled further away. Paetus simply took four steps and jumped up lithely onto the bed, towering over Clodius. With no smile in him to display, Paetus raised his sword, angling the tip down towards his cowering enemy.

  And then his world spun. He was in the air and falling before he realised that Clodius had yanked on the blanket beneath him and jerked him from his feet. Snarling with rage, Paetus rose to his feet once more, only to see Clodius staggering for the door.

  His escape route suddenly filled with the bulky shape of Saufeius.

  ‘Ah, ah, Clodius. Not this way,’ Paetus’ lieutenant admonished.

  Panicked, Clodius turned, his only hope of escape torn from him, and started to amble painfully towards the window. Paetus was up again now, and moving to intercept.

  ‘Thinking of jumping, Clodius? Long way down onto those hard stones. Long way for a man with no strength and a bad wound. For a man close to death. Too long, I’d say.’

  ‘Paetus, there has to be a way…’

  Without another word, the former Caesarean officer and wronged Roman stepped across to his nemesis and plunged the triangular point of his gladius into the man’s chest, pushing it in a few inches and then ripping it back out without the usual twist first. Clodius was near death from blood loss already, and Paetus wanted him conscious to the end.

  His victim fell with a cry. He tried to put his arms down and push hard enough to rise again, but there was no strength there. He simply shuddered as he reached up to the second wound, glistening like reddened lips in his chest, his tunic shredded.

  ‘Help me!’ he implored, reaching towards Saufeius, who simply folded his arms and shook his head.

  ‘They’re coming for the inn, sir,’ his lieutenant said quietly. ‘Milo included.’

  Paetus nodded and sighed. He’d taken too long explaining himself. Still, he had a few moments to finish it. Bending, he drew back his gladius, noting with satisfaction the horror and agony in Clodius’ death-grey face. With easy speed, he lashed out again and again and again, slamming the blade into the shuddering body of the former crime-lord of Rome, ripping through muscles, bones, tendons and organs. Any wound he inflicted now was a death se
ntence, no matter what medical help the man sought, but nothing could stop Paetus. His gore-soaked hand only ended the repetitive motion when Saufeius was suddenly next to him, pulling him back and hauling him, shaking, off the body.

  ‘It’s done, sir. You have to get out of here before Milo comes in.’

  Paetus simply stared at the bloodied heap. It was alive - still shuddering with difficult breaths! He felt the unbearable urge to begin stabbing again, but Saufeius shoved him towards the other man in the doorway. ‘Get him out of the back of the inn, Bassinus, and take the others with you. I’ll handle this.’

  Paetus, suddenly drained and unable to fight the arms that were dragging him back towards the stairs, gave up the fight and watched as Saufeius crouched over the body of the dying man. Then he was gone; dragged by his men to safety.

  * * *

  Publius Clodius Pulcher, one of the most powerful men in the Republic and would-be praetor of Rome, registered somehow through the endless waves of pain that he was still miraculously alive. He would die soon, but he’d seen Paetus - the man who should have been dead for years - dragged out of the room. Whatever happened now it had not been Paetus that killed him. Despite everything, that small victory was some consolation.

  He smiled wickedly to himself as he basked in the glorious bright afternoon sunlight of a cold winter day.

  His wretched, confused brain tried to tell him something, but all he could think of was being warm in that lovely sunshine, despite the cold of the Ianuarius day.

  A comfort akin to a deep sleep.

  His brain insisted something and, try as he might to ignore it, Clodius found that he was listening to that nagging complaint from his senses: